By Gretchen Keiser

In less than a month, Archbishop Thomas Donnellan and four of his counterparts will be the center of nationwide publicity and controversy.

They will be presenting the first draft of a letter on the U.S. economy, which will examine key areas of the nation’s way of doing business and look at those areas in the light of Catholic social teaching.

Even before the first draft appears, the work of the five-member bishops’ committee has drawn critical coverage in “Fortune” and “Business Week” and an analytical article on the cover of the “New York Times” Sunday magazine. It has also prompted a group of prominent Catholic businessmen and government officials, chaired by William Simon, former Secretary of the Treasury, to begin drawing up their own letter defending the U.S. economic system.

Archbishop Donnellan and the others on the drafting committee have been scrupulously concerned that the first draft not appear prior to the presidential election for fear that it will be used in a partisan way.

However, in an interview, the archbishop spoke in general terms of the nature of the pastoral and the reason it is being drawn up.

It was originally conceived of as a sweeping document on “capitalism and Christianity” – the sister document to a letter on Marxism. But the scope of the pastoral has been considerably narrowed and defined over the last three years.

For one thing, it is now limited to the U.S. economy, rather than being an overview of the abstract system of capitalism. In the words of Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, chairman of the drafting committee, “The committee, after lengthy discussion, decided to avoid a theoretical analysis of capitalism…because the reality is so diversified and diffuse that no single theoretical position is adequate or all embracing.”

Even the discussion of the U.S. economy is structured around five general areas of concern, Archbishop Donnellan said. The first is employment, which will also draw in the question of joblessness in the United States and the possibility of job creation to help the unemployed. The second is poverty, which will include discussion of the various sectors, public and private, which should be responding to the needs of the poor, the tax burdens of the poor and government programs. Third is collaboration in shaping of economic policy, which will discuss employee-owner relationships and other aspects of shared responsibility, such as questions raised for a community by the abrupt closing of a major plant or business. Fourth is international economics, particularly the relationship between the economy of the U.S. and that of poor countries. Fifth is food and agriculture, which will include the relationship between U.S. food policy and the needs of other nations and domestic questions like the plight of small and moderate-sized farms.

While these specific questions are sure to draw the attention of the public once the draft is made public, the backbone of the document will be the Biblical perspective and theology that explain why these particular subjects must be examined in the light of ethical and moral values.

For example, Archbishop Weakland, in an interim report to his fellow bishops last November, said that the committee believes “a case can be drawn from Catholic social teaching for urgent, serious and concerted effort being given to the question of employment creation as a national priority.”

Asked about the possibility that the pastoral will recommend the creation of jobs for the unemployed in the U.S., Archbishop Donnellan declined to be specific, but pointed out that the committee was drawing, among other sources, from the writings of Pope John Paul II on labor.

“We’re considering the economy in terms of the dignity of the human person – What does your system do for the human person?” the archbishop said. A key part of the pope’s recent encyclical “On Human Work” centered on the dignity of the person and the belief that work is created for man, rather than man created for work.

Much of the speculation about the letter has concerned exactly what recommendations the bishops may make for change in the way U.S. economic policy operates. The archbishop, who pointed out that he has been described as a fiscal conservative by the “New York Times” and as a liberal by “Business Week,” acknowledged with a rueful smile that plenty of criticism has been generated even before publication. But he expressed understanding about some of the concerns of critics.

For some people “there is a concern that it might be simply a negative critique of the American economy,” he said, while others see the committee as novices outside of their area of competence. Other critics in the business field, the archbishop observed, say, “You don’t give us enough credit” for making moral decision. “Because we have money, have success, it doesn’t mean we’ve put away our morals.”

To the criticism of their competence, the five-member drafting committee can point to years of work on the pastoral. Launched at the November 1980 U.S. bishops’ meeting, the pastoral has been demanding meetings monthly or more often for several years, Archbishop Donnellan said.

Added to the committee in the fall of 1982, to replace a friend and colleague, Bishop Joseph Daley, who was ill, Archbishop Donnellan has been meeting with the committee at least monthly since that time. Typically the meetings last for two or more days, he said. About half the time is spent hearing the testimony of expert witnesses from government, labor, corporate presidents or board chairmen, officials and Scripture scholars and theologians. The other half of the time is devoted to work on the draft, which at the moment is about 150 pages long – “too long” in the assessment of the archbishop.

In addition to Archbishops Weakland and Donnellan, the committee includes Bishop George Speltz of St. Cloud, Minn., Bishop William Weigand of Salt Lake City and Auxiliary Bishop Petre Rosazza of Hartford, Conn.

Four key staff people are working with the committee from the U.S. Catholic Conference, the drafting of the bishops’ pastoral on war and peace, and Monsignor Georgie Higgins, an expert on labor and Catholic social teaching. Two special consultants who are working closely on the document are Dr. Donald Warwick of the Harvard Institute for International Development and Dr. Charles Wilber, chairman of the department of economics at Notre Dame University.

The actual writing is being done by staff people and theologians with the bishops painstakingly reviewing pages and making changes by a process of question, objection and clarification. In addition to the many hours of testimony they have heard in Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York and at Notre Dame University, they have read hundreds of documents, some provided by experts and some supplied by interested and opinionated people who mailed them to a committee member.

Perhaps one point critics overlook, the archbishop said, is that the committee is not of one mind-set. “We don’t sit there in agreement on this thing,” Archbishop Donnellan said, emphasizing that the five bishops have widely differing backgrounds—some with rural roots, others with lengthy experience in the Third World and aware of U.S. economic impact there, others with urban background and financial or economic training.

In their discussions, “the bishops differ on very, very many questions,” the archbishop said.

While these disagreements initially had been worked through in discussion, now that the deadline for the draft is nearing, votes are having to be taken to speed the process, he said. While staff people have worked closely on the document in other ways, only the bishops are voting on these decisions. Final editing will be done by Father John Breslin, S.J., executive director of Georgetown University Press.

The plan is for the document to be presented to the U.S. bishops in time for their Nov. 12 meeting in Washington, D.C. A preliminary discussion will take place, and then bishops will take the draft home to their dioceses for consultation, with notice to respond by Feb. 15. Based on this response, a second draft is planned to be completed in the spring and a third and final draft by the November 1985 bishops meeting.

In its approach the pastoral will be neither abstract nor a list of “solutions” to national economic problems, Archbishop Donnellan said.

“We definitely do not want to limit ourselves to a general statement of principles,” he said, but will suggest several possible solutions to problems raised in the specific economic areas discussed.

The bishops hope to contribute to debate about U.S. economic policy and particularly to bring moral and ethical considerations to bear on the debate as they did with the publication of the pastoral on nuclear war and peace.

Another aim is to remind Catholic laypeople of their responsibility to take part in the debate and to bring their principles to bear on the world.

In light of that aim, the lay group of business and government people working on their own letter on the U.S. economy – out of apparent concern over the direction the U.S. bishops are taking – indicate that part of that goal has already been achieved. And the debate is certain to open wide in November.